Rapid detection and identification of energetic materials such as explosives is one of the cornerstones of the rapidly evolving war on terrorism, and is used to mitigate emerging terrorist threats around the world, targeting the United States of America and its interests, home and abroad. However, due to the extremely low vapor pressures of many commonly used and available explosives, rapid detection and identification of trace amounts of these explosives using conventional analytical tools are limited. The current state-of-the-art technique for detection and identification of explosive systems is Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS). SERS utilizes bare, roughened metal surfaces to enhance Raman signals of adsorbed Raman active molecules. The enhancement of the signals can be by as much as 1014, thus allowing for trace amounts to be detected which could not be detected without the enhancement. However, current use of SERS technology is somewhat limited due to the specificity of the explosives to the substrates (i.e., metal nanoparticles, metal thin films, etc.) used during the collection of explosives. Therefore, a method and system of overcoming the current limitations of SERS technologies to be used in detection and identification of energetic materials would be very beneficial.